I was detained in a hospital fever clinic for an indeterminate amount of time this past Friday. It turned out to be seven hours. They finally released us, eight coughing, sick (but not with covid) patients, at midnight. The next day, I went to get a massage and was refused…

I realized the other day I’ve been living outside my comfort zone for over a year. Not just venturing outside it frequently, but living, 24/7, outside any semblance of familiarity. There’s nowhere I can go, not even my own apartment, that is within my comfort zone. …

Reflections on one year in China — Note: As Medium only allows readers to read three articles for free per month, I may be migrating my journal to another platform such as Substack in the near future. Please stay tuned. My supervisor at the kindergarten where I work doesn’t know my student’s English names. I don’t know…

When do you change? Everyone’s point is different. I don’t know exactly what it was for me, can’t hold up the exact straw that broke my back, but I know my back broke, and it broke hard. Let me back up. This is me: After 2017, after being afraid to…

I write because I have to. The pressure builds. I see red covid barricades go up around my subway station where the ayis do their choreographed dances every morning and my mind flashes to a blank computer screen, my fingers itch for the keyboard. I swipe left on the thought…

最好的适应新环境方法是什么？ 我什么时候得到放松住的感觉？ I moved to China with dreams of exploring a new city and a new country, walks down the street to try out a new coffee shop, train rides through the mountains, flights to places I’d only ever seen on the seat-back screens of airplanes going with short connections…

It’s the last half an hour of my time at my school. A school that calls itself international but is, like many things in this country and this world, not what it says. Today my principal threatened to count my day as a “non attendance”. This means she won’t pay…

Water is coming out of the taps hot. An umbrella is an everyday carry essential, both for the bouts of monsoon rain that pummel the city and for the sun. You know that feeling you get at the beach, when you’ve been under the sun for a few hours and…

The first time I cried in public in China was when I first got to Shenzhen and went to the grocery store and couldn’t figure out how to navigate the app and scanning machine to pay. The second time was today. I have wanted to talk about this for a…